In 1863 a controversial painting made its debut in Paris. Edward Manet unveiled his masterpiece Olympia. Olympia depicts a female nude, within the context of 1860's Paris, reclining on an unmade bed. But it was not her nudity that created the critical uproar. It was her face. She showed no signs of modesty or shame. She confronted the viewer with a gaze of indifference. She was not an idealized Greek goddess (as were most female nudes of the time), as her name suggests, but a courtesan... The equivalent to a high-end prostitute. If this was not shocking enough, her face was recognizable, perhaps even to some of Manet's critics. Prostitutes were often used as nude models, but never was a portrait done of the actual woman. Her gaze is almost accusing, the look of a woman who feels nothing for those who use her services.
The viewer is confronted with Olympia's true identity. She is a real woman who exists on the fringes of society. And that is what is most offensive about this painting - the brutal acknowledgment of Olympia's humanity.
Portraits are not usually thought of as controversial. Perhaps we are so used to our convenient digital cameras that capturing an image of our loved ones seems commonplace. But it was not always like this. Portraits, both paintings and photographs, used to hold supreme value, and only the wealthy could afford such a luxury (perhaps this is still the case in many areas of the world). In a world that is flooded with images, the image of a person has lost much of its meaning.
Take, for example, tabloids. A certain celebrity's photographs are produced and reproduced and reproduced caught in the most intimate and unexpected moments; swimming on vacation, on a walk in the park with their children, out late partying with friends. After a while we forget that this is an image of an actual human being. She becomes a product rather than a person, an image rather than flesh and blood.
An image can reveal humanity, or it can dehumanize. Whatever the outcome of a photograph or painting or drawing or otherwise, one thing is clear: images, especially images of people, have power.
So what does it mean to produce an image of Christ?
We have a clearly defined template of what type of image can represent Christ... This template is largely taken from images of Greek gods (as are most templates in western art!). In recent years this template has been challenged, but generally we can tell if the image in question is depicting Christ. It would be foolish to believe that this is what Christ actually looked like - most of us would probably agree that it would be impossible to create a "historically accurate" portrait of Jesus of Nazareth.
But yet we still make images of him. He may not be as much of a staple in "high art" as he once was (this could be debatable), but his image has certainly resurfaced numerous times in the products of pop culture and kitsch. Generally, the images of Christ that are seen most often today are in these realms. The image of Jesus is more recognizable in a bobble head doll than in Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus.
So the other day I painted the face of Christ for the first time. I was planning to paint him apart from the well known template... but that is not how it worked out. I planned to paint a simple outlined face in white, but it ended up looking cold and unfeeling. In some traditional images, there is something about his beard and his sad eyes that is undeniably human. Disheveled and road-worn, the image of the suffering servant seemed to outshine the humanity of the people surrounding him - a contrast to the clean, Swedish looking man in all his glory following the resurrection. And in truth, such triumphant images were created to glorify a particular diocese rather than to glorify Christ.
In Silence, a book by Shusaku Endo, the protagonist confronts the clean and beautiful image of Christ in the context of the immense suffering of Japanese Christians. For a moment he confuses his own prison-worn reflection with the face of Christ. The clean and dazzling images of Christ in glory are silent to him, but the face distorted by suffering speaks. The face of Christ is most clear under these circumstances - perhaps because we can connect with his humanity best in such depictions.
The face of Christ is a complicated thing. It is a particular beauty that should subvert commonly held opinions about what is beautiful and what is ugly in this world. The face of Christ can be found in the most beautiful of faces, but more often we see his face lifting up the ugly, the powerless, the weak. It is beauty found in the form of a slave.
It was a profound experience. Painting his face (even drawing his face) was something I've never attempted. I felt it was in another threshold of sacredness that I was just not ready to cross... But now I've crossed it. Realistically I know that this is probably not what he looked like and that this image will probably not be seen by many and will have very little consequence in the grand scheme of things... But it was a valuable step for me - to create an image of Christ that took labor, practice, thought, time, creativity, and faith. It was an image that reconnected me to the sacredness and the beauty of humanity and of Christ himself.
Labels: art, faith, images
